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But much of the time we’re more like salmon. As a manager who’s overseen hundreds of performance reviews in my time, I’m always amazed at the blind spots people reveal when they evaluate themselves. What amazes me is the predictability of the exercise. When it comes to themselves, people tend to: A overestimate their contribution to a project; take credit (partial or complete) for successes that truly belong to someone else; • have an elevated opinion of their professional skills or their standing within the company; • conveniently ignore their costly failures or time-consuming deadends; • exaggerate a project’s impact on our company’s net profits because they don’t appreciate the hidden (yet very real) costs of operating a business.

Everyone is more alert, more responsive, and more accommodating. ” It’s another for them to say it to the superstar. On such occasions, I gladly bend my rule about talent’s never touching the money. Sticking to the rule is clearly getting me nowhere. What have I got to lose by breaking it? Frankly, I think this is the sort of gamesmanship that makes business fun. You see this, for example, on the baseball field when a pitcher suddenly loses his fastball or his control. The team needs to send in a relief pitcher quickly before the opposing batters cause too much damage.

That is creativity with people, by which I mean linking individuals who are seemingly unconnected and finding a mutually beneficial reason for them to get together. It goes unnoticed because, in many ways, it’s taken for granted. Business, after all, is all about bringing disparate people together—for example, buyers and sellers, employers and employees, entrepreneurs and investors—and forging a commercial connection between them. Creativity with people is a talent that you notice only when it is absent.